Computer Help forum

CNET's forum on computer help is the best source for finding the solutions to your computer problems. You'll find discussions about fixing problems with computer hardware, computer software, Windows, viruses, security, as well as networks and the Internet.

The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Please refer to our CNET Forums policies for details. All submitted content is subject to our Terms of Use.

Track this discussion and email me when there are updates

If you're asking for technical help, please be sure to include all your system info, including operating system, model number, and any other specifics related to the problem. Also please exercise your best judgment when posting in the forums--revealing personal information such as your e-mail address, telephone number, and address is not recommended.

You are reporting the following post:Advice on this build please.

This post has been flagged and will be reviewed by our staff. Thank you for helping us maintain CNET's great community.

Sorry, there was a problem flagging this post. Please try again now or at a later time.

If you believe this post is offensive or violates the CNET Forums' Usage policies, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the post). Once reported, our moderators will be notified and the post will be reviewed.

What uses will this system have? It kind of makes a difference on the opinion of the system. It would be a huge waste of money for someone just looking for a web browser, email, and word processor system. It looks to be pretty good from a gamer perspective, though the video card is on the lower end of the high end spectrum, soon to be relegated to the upper mid-range level. I would also wonder if the system was going to be run in single or dual channel mode.

For the most part, dual channel memory is just a sinkhole for money, offering little to no benefit performance wise. I liken it to having this beautiful new 8 lane freeway running through town, when pretty much every other road in town is full of potholes, speed bumps, misc junk that fell out the back of some truck, etc. Once you GET to the freeway, you can really cruse, but it's getting to and then on the freeway that's the problem. Communication speeds between RAM and the CPU are the freeway, and communication with every other part of the system would be the roads full of potholes, speed bumps, and various other traffic hazards that greatly limit speed. The hard drive would be like an old country road that's really just a couple of wheel ruts, after it's rained.

So if you don't run the RAM in dual channel mode, you're left with 4GB, and if you have 4GB you should probably be running a 64-bit OS so you can take full advantage of it. That raises a few minor driver related points.

I'm also not entirely sure what the FSB speed is on the Phenom processors, since AMD integrated the memory controller onto the chip die some time back. But RAM timings can be very important with multi-core chips. It's probably safest if your RAM speed is either exactly half, exactly the same, or exactly twice the FSB speed. However, I would go to some place like the Tom's Hardware forums to get more competent advice on that. AMD chips may not be as sensitive to this as Intel chips.

Anyway, the rest seems fine, except a 74GB hard drive seems a bit stingy. With 1TB drives going for under $200US, it seems like you could do better. Unless you plan to have a second higher capacity drive for storage purposes, and that drive is strictly for applications and other things where you might want every minor performance edge you can get.

This is mainly going to be for gaming. I usually have multiple programs open too: iTunes, Firefox, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, TextPad, Visual Studio, WoW. I now WoW doesn't demand much from a PC but I am looking down the road. I had picked out a 150gb Raptor but then it went out of stock on newegg.com and I haven't seen it since. I was planning on scrubbing my current drive and using it as storage, leaving the raptor for programs. I chose the graphics card because I am on a bit of a budget and figured that it would be the easiest thing to upgrade later. The memory is dual channel because on my first build I was told that it was faster. I am planning on running XP Pro. I am not trying to justify my choices here, just trying to give you insight on why I made those decisions. Thanks for your help and please keep the advice coming if you have it.

No need to justify anything, all that really matters in the end is that you're happy with it.

But with the programs you listed, I would most definitely not only consider more RAM, but a 64-bit OS so you can exceed the 4GB limitation of a 32-bit OS. I know there's a 64-bit version of Photoshop, or at the very least, Adobe is working on one. It would likely see a good performance boost from running on a 64-bit OS. VisualStudio might as well. Either way, the both of those programs will benefit from having more RAM, especially if you work with large photos or compile large programs.

I know a lot of people knock it, but I don't find Vista to be all THAT bad. For the most part it doesn't have much to offer over XP, but it does seem to have some excellent caching systems if you have the RAM to let it devote to it. You might really want to think about getting a copy of Vista x64, just so you can have 4GB+ of RAM. Just stay away from XP Pro x64, which not only suffers from a lack of drivers in a lot of cases, but is something of an evolutionary dead end. You can't upgrade it to Vista x64, you can't upgrade it with the 32-bit Vista, and odds are the next version of Windows will be the same way. But you can't upgrade a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit one, you have to format, so you're really probably better off going with a 64-bit OS now when you're building a new system.

Whether or not you decide to go with a 64-bit OS, given you use Photoshop and VisualStudio, I'd go for at least 3GB of RAM. I imagine that ever since Adobe took over Macromedia, DreamWeaver has only gotten more memory hungry as well.

You are telling me that I should get a 64-bit OS so I can exceed 4gigs of RAM, but at the end of your post you say I should get at least 3gigs of RAM. Also, in my original post I state I am getting 4gigs (2 x 2gigs). I really do appreciate your input.